Organisational Development Services for Derbyshire County Council

Derbyshire County Council

Organisational development services, change management, diagnosis of impact of change on employees, building a high-performing and resilient team, team coaching

The Public Health Authority for Derbyshire was the body ultimately responsible for serving the health needs of the community within Derbyshire County and was under the management and auspices of the NHS. As a result of strategic re-structuring, the Public Health Authority was to come under the governance and umbrella of the County Council and renamed the Public Health Team. This was a key change and integration programme. During its implementation. it became clear that elements of the integration plan were having adverse impacts on the members of the public health team, leading to low morale, some pockets of low engagement and high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity.

It was decided to appoint an external organisational business, emintell, to provide organisational development services, to diagnose the issues affected the effective integration of the team, and design and deliver suitable interventions which would support the members of the team integrate much more effectively and to develop into an effective directorate of the county council.

Solution

Diagnostic Stage – Interviews and Feedback

An initial diagnostic stage took place, interviewing several stakeholders across within the Public Health team and the county council to properly diagnose the issues and the opportunities. The results were built into a suitable matrix which helped to highlight the key problem areas, together with several interventions against each to resolve effectively.

Feedback & Recommendations Stage

Having collated the feedback from the diagnostic stage emintell put together an overall approach together with specific recommendations on resolving the integration challenges. A series of events were arranged to disseminate the feedback.

Team coaching Stage

An important aspect was that the team took ownership and responsibility for implementing the required changes both behaviourally and practically. Whilst emintell facilitated the process, it was the team members both individually and collectively who accepted responsibility for ensuring that they shifted to embracing the change. This required commitment and the courage to make the important attitudinal shift to enable this to happen. Alongside this, emintell provided support and facilitation services, including a day long workshop.

The key objectives of this team event were to:

To begin to re-build team cohesiveness, trust and sense of purpose.

To commence gaining clarity on desired values and behaviours for the people working in the directorate.

To enable people, gain a clear understanding of the directorates’ relevant strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats

To give people some strategies in managing responses to uncertainty and excessive stress.

To give the team members a sense of optimism, hope and a renewed sense of efficacy and resolve.

Coaching

The team approach was supplemented with personal coaching for some individuals .

The team coaching approach continued with the members of the team, making both practical actions and behavioural shifts to work more in collaboration with other areas within the council until the full integration into “One Team” occurred.

Impact and Benefits

The public health team integrated fully into the county council. They gained clarity on the challenges and resistance they experienced. They identified solutions, using a team and self-coaching approach taking individual and collective responsibility. This approach stood to their advantage as the integration process continued. The County Council also made a lot of efforts to facilitate this and give the public health team necessary assurances, wherever possible and appropriate.

Derbyshire County Council

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